The Great Credit Race Is On

I've been working with a Filene i3 team on a project we've called the Great Credit Race. I jumped on board to help with the concept and all of the design and web development work because the topic is near and dear to my heart—helping young people establish credit. There's no shortage of information, advice and tools out there to help you improve your credit score, but there is virtually nothing to help you establish credit quickly and effectively.

The dilemma for young people is that credit scores are based primarily on your history with credit and of course young people don't have a history with credit!

One of the original directions the team took was to look at an alternative or to augment the established credit score methodology. Look at things like social credibility, health or other indicators versus just straight up credit history. While we believed that there is a big opportunity in that particular area, it became apparent quickly that that is a much bigger project than a six-month pilot.